Reggae in Australia

Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. Australia has several bands and sound systems that play reggae music in a style faithful to its expression in Jamaica. Australia has a relatively small Jamaican community, but reggae penetrated local consciousness via the popularity of reggae among the non-Jamaican population of England in the 1960s and 1970s. Many indigenous musicians have embraced reggae, both for its musical qualities and its ethos of resistance. Examples include No Fixed Address and Coloured Stone.

The first Reggae sound system in Australia was Soulmaker, established in 1972 by J.J. Roberts, a Jamaican from Saint Catherine Parish. Bob Marley & The Wailers toured Australia in 1979, playing Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney. One of the first Australian reggae bands was Untabu. They had releases on Larrikin Records and were resident in a number of clubs in the Darlinghurst and Manly area of Sydney. They also toured the East coast regularly. They performed original music and reggae covers. The Aboriginal band No Fixed Address from Adelaide also had reggae songs in their repertoire.

In 1984, Australian label Corroboree Records had its first release with Dangerous Times. This 7" single was recorded at Channel One Studios with the Roots Radics, voiced and mixed at King Tubby's with Bugs as engineer, and voiced by Dudley Green and General Justice. It Contains the song "Dangerous Dub" on the B side, which was mixed by King Tubby. It was released in Jamaica, the UK and Australia. In 1985 Larry Maluma arrived in Australia from Zambia with master tapes recorded in Zambia. He remixed a couple of tracks, Black or White and Chimutima Chako at AAV studios in Melbourne for a 45 single vinyl which was released in 1986 under his own newly formed independent (Safari Music) label. In 1987, two years after his arrival from Zambia Larry Maluma released his first album Confusion on his own Safari Music label. The video clip Black and White from the same album was aired on Countdown Revolution and Rock Arena on ABC. 2014 sees Larry Maluma release his 14th album, Ndakondwa (I'm Happy). www.larrymaluma.com.au The first notable dub release in Australia was Ten Dubs That Shook The World by Sheriff Lindo And The Hammer, issued on the artist's own label, Endless Recordings, in 1988. The LP was reissued on the Creative Vibes label with five extra tracks in 1998, and again by EM Records of Japan in 2006, on CD (catalogue number EM1049CD) and LP (EM1049LP), limited to 500 copies. Only the CD contains the five extra tracks.

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